Hillary’s “Hypercognition”?

The Politicker’s suggestion that Hillary had, for the first time, subtly apologized for her vote to authorize the Iraq war got a bit of attention around the blogosphere, including an analysis from MyDD’s Chris Bowers that draws an uncomfortable comparison with John Kerry:

I don’t want to criticize Senator Clinton too much for finally admitting the obvious. Still, apart from the content of her admission, I can’t help but point out that there is something more than a little worrisome about her use of language in her admission. Quite frankly, she seems to be struggling with same hypercognition problems from which Gore and Kerry suffered in their general election campaigns. Clinton’s answer reminds me of Kerry’s tortured line about wanting to give the President the authority to go to war, but wanting to conduct the war in a different way, or some such piece of linguistic roadkill. All of the different, garbled and mangled lines he produced on the matter seemed to do little except give the impression that he did not even have a position on the war. If Clinton is going to struggle with her language the same way our last two nominees struggled, I don’t want her anywhere near the national ticket no matter what her position on the war is.

And certainly, if her apology (assuming that’s what it was) isn’t clear enough for the AP and the Times to play it that way…it’s not awful clear.

But it’s also worth noting of the email — once you view it as something of an apology — how comprehensively it distances Hillary from every aspect of the Bush Administration’s Iraq policy.

We have to continue the fight against terrorism and make sure we apply America’s best values and effective strategies in making our world and country a better and safer place…. That means repudiating torture which undermines America’s values. That means reforming intelligence and its use by decision makers. That means rejecting the Administration’s doctrine of preemptive war and their preference to going it alone rather than building real international support.
It’s becoming difficult to describe her as “continuing to support” this war.